I have pretty high storage needs, which are constantly increasing. Fortunately, the largest drives available seem to be scaling with the amount of space I can occupy. The 1TB disk I currently have sitting in the Superdrive bay of my 15" Macbook Pro (Mid 2010) is making me nervous with its loud seeking. I'm going to replace it for sure, but it seems as though laptop disks above 1TB are not yet readily available (besides the 15mm tall form factor, which is no good for MBPs). I noticed that Other World Computing is selling this drive, Toshiba part no. MQ01ABD150, but I can't seem to find any info outside of OWC. I know they carry some specialist products not always readily available elsewhere, but am I right to be skeptical of this drive? Anyone know anything about it, i.e. whether it will truly fit a 15" unibody MBP?

Update

An OWC representative said that the drive would actually be too big to fit a MBP, in either bay. So the wait for a larger-than-1TB laptop drive continues.

2 Answers
2

Other World Computing is a very reputable Apple specialist and I don't doubt that the Toshiba drive is compatible. If they list your particular Macbook Pro in the compatibility list, then it surely should fit. And the description mentions 12.5mm height which also confirms it should work.

And a quick Google search on the Toshiba part # MQ01ABD150 yields several results on other availabilities of that drive, albeit more limited than many smaller capacities.

It's worth noting that it is a 5400rpm drive and not 7200rpm, which you would be even less likely to find, if 7200rpm drives at that capacity even exist in the notebook compatible (12.5mm height or less) variety yet.

Thanks for the vote of confidence; my skepticism is somewhat diminished :) Not too concerned about performance because I use an SSD for my boot drive. I searched for the part number, but all of the results I could see are on shopping sites that link back to OWC. It just weirds me out a bit that they seem to be the ONLY people with a 12.5mm 1.5TB drive. How can that be?
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acjayDec 6 '12 at 14:21

There could be a number of reasons why they are the only retailer with that drive from exclusive rights or some contractual detail, who knows. If it concerns you that much try contacting OWC by chat or phone from their main page. Or contact Toshiba even. The only real thing that would turn me away from this drive is the relatively short 2 year warranty. Many drives come with at least a 3 year and some have a 5 year warranty, but that's just my opinion.
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manofthesonDec 6 '12 at 19:55

Thanks for the info. I'll probably replace it with a 2TB before the 2-year warranty is up anyway :)
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acjayDec 6 '12 at 20:33

You must have some serious storage needs! And you are welcome!
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manofthesonDec 6 '12 at 23:33

Lots of photo stuff, lots of very bulky data used for research
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acjayDec 7 '12 at 0:46

I bought the 1.5TB 12.5mm 2.5" internal Toshiba hard drive and installed it in my mid-2009 MBP15. It fit perfectly.

You can't imagine how much better it is than the original 500GB HDD that came inside my MBP. I have a 1TB partition for OSX and a 500GB partition for Win7. I have all the elbow room I could possibly need for years to come.

Before I bought it, I already knew that 12.5mm z-height HDDs fit inside the MBP because I saw a YouTube video of a guy installing a 1TB 12.5mm HDD.